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Toilet equality

The Anna Raccoon Archives

by SadButMadLad on May 7, 2011

Seat up or seat down. Women want it down. Men want it up (ooo-err missus).

Feminists have made a huge issue out of toilets seats. They say that men who don’t care about their fellow earth passengers are inconsiderate lazy misogynists. For a man to be a real man he would always have the wishes of woman to the fore front of his mind and he should always put the toilet seat up during use and put it back down after use. For a man to really love his wife he will always think about the position of the toilet seat before he finishes in the loo.

However from my male point of view I think of the situation in a different way. I think women are lazy and irritating for forcing us to put the toilet seat down. In the middle of the night (and how many of us men have the need to go during the night) having to life the toilet seat up can be awkward when you are half asleep.

Women use the loo in the middle of the night too. Their problem is sitting on cold porcelain, which when half asleep will definitely wake you up. Though I gather (I have very limited experience of women’s usage of the loo) that many women crouch over the loo rather than sit on it. Something to do with the quality of the female toilets in pubs, bars, and clubs. I’ve even heard that women can use urinals too with some gymnastics.

For their to be true sexual equality in the john it shouldn’t be the seat that is down but the lid. That way both sexes have to lift part of the toilet apparatus to use it.

There is also the libertarian aspect to the problem. You should take personal responsibilty for your use of the toilet. You should not rely or force someone else to leave the toilet seat in a state to your preference.

Another inequality is the number of toilets. Why is there always a queue for female loos but hardly any for men’s. I know it’s to do with the average length of time that men and women take to have a tinkle. It’s also due to urinals being placed on the wall whilst toilets are always in cubicles which take up a lot more room. So for a given space, there will be more urinals than cubicles. So why after all these years of sexual equality have the building regulations not been brought up to date.

In some places, Edinburgh for example, the council has stipulated that it’s more important to have equal number of toilets even if the clientèle are mainly male (or female). So an old pub frequented mainly by men will have to spend lots of money to revamp the toilet facilities for the non-existent women to keep their license and that if they don’t the place will be closed down.

Why do newly built shopping centres still have queues for the women’s? Don’t they realise that even in this age of sexual equality that on average there are more women than men in a shopping centre.

One other point. Toilet rolls. Do you have it hanging at the front or back? Is it true that men have it hanging at the front and women at the back. Is it a sex related thing or just down to personal preferences.

Hanging at the front. If it hangs at the back it easily unravels without stopping.

Lilith x (a woman)

PS. If the seat is up and the loo is flushed then it creates anxiety in some women. Ie. all the spray of urine and shit flew further than it would have had the loo lid been shut at the time of flushing.

“One other point. Toilet rolls. Do you have it hanging at the front or back? Is it true that men have it hanging at the front and women at the back. Is it a sex related thing or just down to personal preferences.”

Back in January I did a little research on this. Results here and here.

I’ve long put the lid (not just the seat) down. It originally started after I knocked something off the shelf and had to fish it out of the (fortunately clean) water. Now it would land on the lid and bounce.

The follow-on reason for putting the lid down is having a dog who would drink from the toilet bowl if it was accessible. This is despite having a big bowl of fresh water readily available.

Toilet paper should hang at the front because that then leaves space to get one’s hand behind it. If it’s at the back then I find myself discommoded.

After much research I have acquired a vertical toilet roll holder similiar in design to this. A vindaloo may require more than the full nine yards on a roll and it’s always wise to have reserves close at hand in the event of a sudden counter attack.

That’s it! An entrepreneurial breakthrough to make me rich! A refrigerated bogroll dispenser for the curry lover. And to return to the original question, a servo-operated toilet seat and lid system, linked to sensors which determine the gender of the person entering the bathroom, and configure these movable parts accordingly. (A daft idea, but no dafter than the perennial whining on this subject.)

I read something a while ago about how many bacteria are released into the air whenever you flush, and how far they travel. I now a) always put the lid down, and b) for an emergency hankie at work, take a paper towel from the canteen next door rather than from in the Gents’.

Every three weeks or so a survey is published that finds more bacteria on computer keyboards, phone handsets and bombay mix dishes than toilet seats. And then in every other advert break I’m informed of the benefits of drinking “Good Bacteria” . Apparently, if one adds up the bacteria in one’s gut, on one’s skin and between one’s cells, the weight of them actually exceeeds one’s own weight.

I have fixed a few toilets recently and me not being a plumber I asked one why the hinge on the right was the one that always is the one that is rusted. he said all blokes hold in with their right hand so it splashes that way.

In the past i couldn’t decide what what was the best thing to do, should I put the seat down in case a woman used it after me or or leave the seat up incase a man used it. I decided that it was best just to put the lid down with the seat. That way it would give the next person a decision to make…

In this part of Australia the local councils are installing unisex toilets in the parks. The yobs pee over the toilet seat in a very democratic way. And for unknown reason people steal the toilet paper. The best laid plans of men etc.

As a bona-fide chap, I always like to leave the lid down after use of the toilet. I see no problem with seat down issues. But of course the feminists like to invent all sorts of bizarre blames and shames.

About the bog roll holders, I recommend anyone who gets the chance to check out at the bogs in Auckland airport. The toilet roll holders have a mechanism a bit like an inertia reel seatbelt so that once you pull the paper too far the roll hits a cam or something and stop rotating, and since you’re still pulling the end of the paper it tears off at one of the perforations. Clever idea as it means that you don’t yank the paper downwards only to find out the perforations have the strength of mild steel and end up with a spinning roll throwing paper all over the floor. The downside is that it only lets you have one sheet at a time unless you pull the paper out slowly enough that it doesn’t tear off when the roll stops and then repeat until you’ve got enough. I suspect minimising the number of Gaia’s precious trees that need to be turned into bog roll might be behind that decision.

Heh. We have two dispensers on opposite sides, each surrounded on the floor by the confetti of frustration, and next to the loo a good old roll of proper paper. Loose, untidy, but used by everyone. The old ideas are sometimes the best.

It’s called “queueing theory” (no, really this has been extensively studied) and you need something like 2:1, maybe 3:1 female to male facilities to equalise queueing times in a 50/50 female to male crowd.

You should put the lid down (yes, the lid, not just the seat) before flushing, otherwise the Toilet Aerosol Effect (yes, really, see here http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16033465 ) carries small droplets of wee and poo all over the bathroom, including onto your toothbrush.